Article excerpt

Summary

Contemporary French philosophers typically characterise modern Western thought as an egocentric assimilation of the Other by the Self, Similar to Western thought's reductive relationship towards alterity, the relationship between Europe and Africa is, more often than not, seen as an asymmetric one of Europeanisation. The ethical dilemma being addressed in this essay concerns a possible way of interacting with the Other without necessarily violating or reducing its alterity. An ethical appeal demands a response, for ignoring the appeal and remaining silent amounts to "murdering" the Other. However, a response necessarily amounts to a violation. A critical analysis of two discourses on postcolonial Africa is conducted to address this dilemma: a political and urbanistic discourse. The first is that of the South African president, Thabo Mbeki's briefing on the implementation of the Millennium Africa Renaissance Programme (MAP) at the World Economic Forum held on 28 January 2001. The urbanistic discourse is a study on the Nigerian city of Lagos performed by "The Harvard Design School Project" (HPC). Using a "comparative methodology" these two discourses are critically analysed in an effort to find an alternative African modernity, an ethical alternative that leaves the alterity of the Other intact.

Outsider! Trespasser! You have no right to this subject! ... I know:
nobody ever arrested me. Nor are they ever likely to. Poacher!
Pirate! We reject your authority. We know you, with your foreign
language wrapped around you like a flag: speaking about us in your
forked tongue, what can you tell but lies? (1)

(Rushdie 1984: 23)

1 Introduction: Sketching the Scenario and Situating the Ethical Dilemma

Africa can be conceived of as a heterotopia--a heterotopia par excellence. The heterotopia is, after all, the site of violence and transgression where disparate elements can coexist as difference (Foucault [1967]1998). (2) According to Foucault, a heterotopia has the ability to juxtapose in a single real place several emplacements that are, in themselves, incompatible (p. 181). It is a site where we can speak of the possibility of the impossibility of convergence, because a confrontation with the other necessarily means being violated. The mere awareness of the other is a violation of its alterity. And Africa has been violated. Even as we write on Africa now--as Europeans--Africa is being violated (and, as in the above quotation taken from Rushdie's Shame, we are reminded of our disputable ability to speak at all . …

Dracula and Theory: A Bite-Sized Introduction to Critical Theory for A Level: Having Nightmares about Literary Theory? Gareth Calway Invites You to Confront Your Demons through a Series of Readings of Bram Stoker's DraculaCalway, Gareth.
English Drama Media, No. 15, October 2009